Maintaining Momentum in 2019

Happy New Year! If you’ve recently been
to any retailer you know that Valentine’s Day is upon us. Well, actually, not
really but the Valentine’s chocolate hearts and cards sure are. When I was a
child retailers used the first or second week of the new year to first display Valentine
decorations. In the midst of my Christmas shopping, a few weeks back, you
guessed it, a heart shaped Valentine box of candy. My friend and I checked the expiration
date to confirm our only rational determination that it was left over from last
year. Nope, fresh and ready to go for 2019! All that Christmas lighting, trees,
and reindeers “invaded” by Valentine’s chocolate made me question how often I
rush from one season to another? How frequently do I try to move towards the
next “thing” or “event” before completing and ultimately executing the current
season’s learnings I’ve just received?

Imagine if you will, you’ve been
involved in some form of development program (January, 2019 resolution perhaps).
The course has just concluded and you have your lovely certificate of
completion in hand. What’s next? Do you proceed to do your best to implement
the new learnings or do you rush off to the next new development flavor of the
month? Life is sort of like that from time to time. Sometimes we are so focused
on achievement for the sake of achievement that we circumvent the intent of the
learning experience. Worse yet are those opportunities for true personal
development that are never fully realized because of our lack of patience in
the post training implementation process.

Have you recently completed some from of
training in one of your workplaces (i.e., corporate, community, household, or
place of worship)? If so, have you taken the time to truly implement those new
learnings? If not, why not begin today? Why not take a few minutes now to
brainstorm regarding how to best utilize those bright and shiny new skills you’ve
recently acquired? After all, you did put the time into achieving them; and
yes, someone you know needs what you’ve recently learned in 2019 because gosh,
St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner.